wheaten cake, greased it well with the sausage, and started towards us

with it. It dropped in the dirt, and he picked it up and polished it on

his breeches, and laid it before us. Jack said, "I pass." We all

passed. He put some eggs in a frying pan, and stood pensively prying

slabs of meat from between his teeth with a fork. Then he used the fork

to turn the eggs with--and brought them along. Jack said "Pass again."

All followed suit. We did not know what to do, and so we ordered a new

ration of sausage. The cook got out his wire, apportioned a proper

amount of sausage-meat, spat it on his hands and fell to work! This

time, with one accord, we all passed out. We paid and left. That is

all I learned about Turkish lunches. A Turkish lunch is good, no doubt,

but it has its little drawbacks.

When I think how I have been swindled by books of Oriental travel, I want

a tourist for breakfast. For years and years I have dreamed of the

wonders of the Turkish bath; for years and years I have promised myself

that I would yet enjoy one. Many and many a time, in fancy, I have lain

in the marble bath, and breathed the slumbrous fragrance of Eastern

spices that filled the air; then passed through a weird and complicated

system of pulling and hauling, and drenching and scrubbing, by a gang of

naked savages who loomed vast and vaguely through the steaming mists,

like demons; then rested for a while on a divan fit for a king; then

passed through another complex ordeal, and one more fearful than the

first; and, finally, swathed in soft fabrics, been conveyed to a princely

saloon and laid on a bed of eider down, where eunuchs, gorgeous of

costume, fanned me while I drowsed and dreamed, or contentedly gazed at

426

The Innocents Abroad